The ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory has generated a wealth of deliberative experiments. The purpose of deliberation as a research technique (as opposed to policymaking or public consultation) is distinctive: to uncover the public’s informed, considered, and collective view on a...

Should raising the growth rate of GDP per capita be a policy goal of governments in general, and of the British government in particular? Many people would say no, for the following reasons: 1) GDP is hopelessly flawed as a measure of welfare; 2) Growing GDP is pointless since most people don’t...

Theil’s information-theoretic approach to the measurement of inequality (Theil 1967) is set in the context of subsequent developments over recent decades. It is shown that Theil’s initial insight leads naturally to a very general class of inequality measures. It is thus closely related to a...

This paper presents a political economy model of inflation as a result of social conflict. Agents are heterogeneous in terms of income. Agents’ income levels determine their ability to hedge against the effects of inflation. The interaction of heterogeneous cash holdings and preferences over...

The paper analyses the performance of unemployment benefit systems in a search-theoretic framework. The criteria of evaluation comprise the alleviation of poverty and the reduction in income inequality, whilst the diversity of opinions about these is taken into account. Also, the trade-off...

Starting from the axiomatisation of polarisation contained in Esteban and Ray (1994) and Chakravarty and Majumdar (2001) we investigate whether people's perceptions of income polarisation is consistent with the key axioms. This is carried out using a questionnaire-experimental approach that...

The techniques of simple random sampling are seldom appropriate in the empirical analysis of income distributions. Various types of weighting schemes are usually required either from the point of view of welfare-economic considerations (the mapping of household/family distributions into...

The shadow economy and tax evasion are both widespread in Greece. This has adverse effects in terms of horizontal and vertical equity, as well as in terms of efficiency. We take advantage of access to a large sample of income tax returns in 2004/05, and compare tax reported incomes with those...

A general equilibrium model of individual specialization is presented in which agents trade off the productivity and price implications of producing a narrower range of goods. Agents with highly specific skills turn out to benefit most from large markets. The model is able to replicate features...